EDUCATION Comments turned off

Equity Quackery Quality-free education and racial bean counting are still with us. By Larry Sand

Posted By on June 5th, 2025

https://amgreatness.com/2025/06/04/equity-quackery/

While numerous changes are needed to improve our faltering education system, eliminating the concept of “equity” should perhaps be at the top of the list.

Grading for Equity, written by Joe Feldman, a former teacher, administrator, and “educational grading consultant,” made its arrival on the scene in 2018 and, sadly, is still used by many schools.

In the Grading for Equity regimen, teachers don’t consider homework, extra credit, or “soft-skill” behaviors, such as punctuality, attendance, timely submission of assignments, and class participation. Students are given additional time to complete tests and can retake them repeatedly to demonstrate mastery or raise their grade. Also, teacher quality is not essential. All that matters is that certain ethnicities are equally represented in various areas, making the group the focus instead of the individual.

The examples are myriad. In Buffalo, the state spent $500,000 on the Teacher Diversity Pipeline Pilot. The goal of this program is to help teacher aides become certified teachers. Eligibility, however, is based on whether the employee increases the diversity of the teaching staff, rather than on their ability to teach or their classroom experience.

In California, Palo Alto schools are eliminating honors classes. Beginning in September, first-year students will no longer have the option of taking a rigorous honors biology class. Proponents insist that removing different “lanes” for students or “de-laning,” based on achievement, will promote equity and encourage all kids to pursue science throughout their high school career.

In Illinois, state data show that only 41% of students in third through eighth grade could read at grade level in 2024, and just 31% in 11th grade. In math, 28% of third through eighth graders were proficient, and only 26% of 11th graders were.

What does State Superintendent of Education Tony Sanders plan to do about the poor scores?

He wants to lower proficiency benchmarks on state assessments, claiming his plan will “right-size our benchmarks for proficiency on state assessments to provide us with more accurate data about student performance.”

IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

Biden’s Border Nihilism Will Live Long After He Is Gone Biden’s border legacy isn’t just policy—it’s a demographic earthquake that will rattle America’s foundation long after he’s gone. By Victor Davis Hanson

Posted By on June 5th, 2025

https://amgreatness.com/2025/06/05/bidens-border-nihilism-will-live-long-after-he-is-gone/

The spiteful open-borders legacy of Joe Biden will plague America for generations to come, long after the former president is a fading bad memory.

Somewhere between 10-12 million foreign nationals are believed to have entered the U.S. illegally under his watch, to add to the existing 12-20 million illegal aliens.

Almost all were unaudited.

They stormed the border for four years without background checks of the sort that American citizens must undergo to purchase a firearm or take out a loan.

At a time when citizens were expelled from the military for not submitting to the experimental mRNA COVID inoculations, millions of foreign nationals, with the Biden administration’s encouragement, crossed the southern border, exempt from any vaccination requirement or medical examination.

When Americans were required to present multiple forms of identification to apply for a mandatory “real ID” to fly in 2025, millions of illegal entrants were flown across the country, often stealthily and under the cover of night, without any valid ID at all.

On some days, the Trump administration has managed to deport 800 of Biden’s illegal aliens.

But ten times that many entered illegally each day under Biden.

Trump’s border patrol would have to deport over 8,000 people every day of his four-year tenure just to undo what Biden wrought by his dismantling of federal immigration law.

Some 500,000 illegal entrants are believed to have criminal records—a number greater than the population of Oakland, California.

Indeed, new reports relate almost every day that another illegal alien has murdered, raped, or assaulted an American citizen.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The CBO Isn’t Partisan, It’s Just Incompetent

Posted By on June 5th, 2025

https://issuesinsights.com/2025/06/05/the-cbo-isnt-partisan-its-just-incompetent/

When the Congressional Budget Office reported that the Republicans’ “big, beautiful” reconciliation bill would boost deficits and throw millions off insurance rolls, it was treated as gospel truth.

The CBO is, after all, a “non-partisan” agency, staffed by just-the-facts-ma’am budget and economic experts who don’t have any axes to grind.

Maybe that’s true. But it’s not partisan bias that is the problem. It’s the CBO’s terrible track record when it comes to predicting the impact of tax and health care policies.

By the CBO’s accounting, the House reconciliation bill would cut tax revenue by $3.7 trillion and cut spending by $1.3 trillion over the next 10 years, resulting in deficits that are $2.4 trillion larger than they’d otherwise be.

To make matters worse, the proposed Medicaid spending cuts would throw nearly 11 million people off insurance rolls, according to the CBO.

That combination just happens to make for the perfect Democratic talking point – “Republicans want to cut taxes for the rich at the expense of the poor!!” – which is why its new forecasts are front-page news. And when the White House suggested that the CBO’s projections were biased, the mainstream press rushed to the CBO’s defense.

But wait a second. These are 10-year projections. They are based on a raft of assumptions about incredibly complicated systems.

So, the important question is, just how good is the Congressional Budget Office at making such predictions?

The answers are easily found, although you’d never know it based on the media’s total lack of interest.

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

What Lies Beneath By Joan Swirsky

Posted By on June 5th, 2025

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2025/06/what_lies_beneath.html

There are approximately eight billion people in the world, just about all of whom know nothing about what’s going on inside of their bodies — an undiscovered tooth high in the gum, an insect embedded in the skull, an undetected stroke.  I even knew a man in his eighties — a friend and neighbor — whose doctors found a deeply lodged bullet!

What does all this have to do with politics?  Everything!

After World War II, the unspeakable, malignant horrors of the Holocaust were revealed for all the world to see: six million Jews, from infants to centenarians and everyone in between, rounded up, crammed into suffocating cattle cars, hauled off to concentration camps, and gassed to death in Hitler’s crematoria, effectively eliminating half of the microscopic Jewish population of 12 million in the entire world.

Surviving Jews all over the world dared not tell their children of this catastrophe, the better to shield them from lifelong paranoia, dread, and depression.

But what followed — from the war’s end in 1945 to the miraculous advent of Israel becoming a state in 1948, and for about a decade or more beyond — was encouraging to these protective parents.  Not one word of Jew-hatred or vicious stereotypes or calls for the death of the Jews.

Aha, these naïve Americans — and Jews throughout the world — believed. Humanity has learned its lesson.  We finally, at last, after almost 4,000 years, have nothing to worry about.  Baruch Hashem!

What Lies Beneath

What Jews didn’t realize was that it was not benevolence or compassion or empathy that motivated the behavior of many in the outside world, but rather the self-interested preservation of the image they wanted to convey — of decency, tact, discretion, moral clarity.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

There’s No Evidence IDF Attacked Gaza Aid Center. U.S. Media Ran with the Hamas Claim Anyway By Brittany Bernstein

Posted By on June 5th, 2025

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/theres-no-evidence-idf-attacked-gaza-aid-center-u-s-media-ran-with-the-hamas-claim-anyway/?utm_medium=email&_

Over the weekend, media outlets including CNN, CBS, and ABC uncritically amplified Hamas’s claims that Israeli forces opened fire near a Gaza aid distribution center, killing dozens and injuring hundreds of others.

According to officials from the Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health, at least 31 people were killed and 170 wounded on Sunday when Israeli forces opened fire on civilians massing near an aid site run by the U.S.-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).

Israel immediately denied it was behind the attack and released drone footage of unidentified masked men shooting unarmed civilians near the aid center.

“Findings from an initial inquiry indicate that the IDF did not fire at civilians while they were near or within the humanitarian aid distribution site and that reports to this effect are false,” the IDF said in a statement.

“The IDF is cooperating with the GHF and international aid organizations in order to enable the distribution of aid to the Gazan residents — and not to Hamas.”

The IDF did acknowledge firing warning shots in an effort to maintain order at the aid site, but says no one was hit.

Curiously, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, the organization running the distribution center, insists nothing happened at all, releasing a statement Sunday saying that food had been “distributed today without incident.”

“We are aware of rumors being actively fomented by Hamas suggesting deaths and injuries today. They are untrue and fabricated,” the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation said.

It’s not entirely clear what happened, but it’s worth noting that Hamas aggressively opposes the distribution of aid by organizations that it does not control.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Why Hamas Rejected Witkoff’s Ceasefire Plan by Khaled Abu Toameh

Posted By on June 4th, 2025

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21666/hamas-witkoff-ceasefire

The leaders of the Iran-backed Hamas terror group do not seem to be in a rush to end the war with Israel: after all, they and their family members are not living in the Gaza Strip…

Hamas’s political leaders, billionaires funded by Iran’s mullahs and the rulers of Qatar, live in several Arab and Islamic countries, including Qatar, Turkey, Algeria and Lebanon. They and their family members lead luxurious lives in these countries and do not have to worry about lack of food or medicine.

Hamas leaders are in no rush to accept any deal because, unlike most of the residents of the Gaza Strip, they do not have to stand in line and risk being shot by Hamas terrorists for trying to receive food from a humanitarian organization.

Moreover, the Hamas leadership will never accept any ceasefire without prior permission from the Iranian regime. The mullahs in Tehran also appear in no rush to end the war against Israel. They want the war to continue: it distracts attention from Iran’s efforts to acquire nuclear weapons.

For [Hamas’s leaders], the No. 1 priority is to make sure that Hamas remains in power the day after the war

For Hamas, “the end” (eliminating Israel) justifies “the means” (sacrificing Palestinians as “martyrs” in the jihad against Israel).

Hamas staying in power would be great news for the Iranian regime, jihadis, and Islamist terror groups who consider the US the “Great Satan,” and are committed to killing Americans, Christians, Jews and all other “infidels.”

HOMELAND SECURITY Comments turned off

Two Charged with Smuggling a ‘Dangerous Biological Pathogen.’ Guess Where They’re From? Sarah Anderson

Posted By on June 4th, 2025

https://pjmedia.com/sarah-anderson/2025/06/03/researchers-smuggled-in-a-dangerous-biological-pathogen-guess-where-theyre-from-n4940416

United States Attorney Jerome F. Gorgon, Jr., along with Cheyvoryea Gibson, a special agent in charge with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Detroit Division and Marty C. Raybon, Director of Field Operations with U.S. Customs and Border Protection, announced on Tuesday that two people had been “charged in a criminal complaint with conspiracy, smuggling goods into the United States, false statements, and visa fraud.” 

According to the announcement, the two were smuggling “a fungus called Fusarium graminearum, which scientific literature classifies as a potential agroterrorism weapon. This noxious fungus causes ‘head blight,’ a disease of wheat, barley, maize, and rice, and is responsible for billions of dollars in economic losses worldwide each year. Fusarium graminearum’s toxins cause vomiting, liver damage, and reproductive defects in humans and livestock.” 

Who were the two people, you ask? They were 33-year-old Yunqing Jian and her boyfriend, 34-year-old Zunyong Liu of China. 

Jian is a a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Michigan and has been working at the University of Michigan’s Molecular Plant-Microbe Interaction Laboratory since 2023. Lui works at a Chinese university where he conducts research on the same pathogen.

Last year, Liu, who apparently came to the U.S. on a B2 tourist visa, brought the materials in question, and when asked about them by agents, lied and said he had no idea what they were and that they’d been planted in his bag. Later, he changed his story and said he “hid the samples in his backpack because he knew there were restrictions on the importation of the materials,” and he just wanted to come work with his girlfriend. Sure.  

Recommended: Guess What Chinese Nationals Are Stealing Now?

Not only has Jian reportedly “received Chinese government funding for her work on this pathogen in China,” but she also allegedly owns electronics that “contain information describing her membership in and loyalty to the Chinese Communist Party.” 

FBI director Kash Patel told Fox News Digital that the situation “demonstrates a serious national security threat to America’s food supply.”

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Doctoring the Truth About Gaza Gregory Rose and Lewi Stone

Posted By on June 4th, 2025

https://quadrant.org.au/news-opinions/israel/doctoring-the-truth-about-gaza/

Last week hundreds of Australian doctors circulated a call to the Australian government for action against Israel. We want to believe that all were motivated by universal humanitarian concerns. But their call made minimal demands of Hamas and claimed that Palestinian terrorists held by Israel are hostages. The doctors’ repeated misinformation that has its sources in Hamas propaganda.

The Gaza Health Ministry information office, its data and its doctors are deeply complicit in the Hamas disinformation campaign. They are extensively supported in their spread of disinformation by Hamas-affiliated Gazan journalists who, in turn, are contracted by our own media. They accuse the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) of atrocities by “targeting children, women, the elderly and civilians”. There is no such evidence concerning Gazan casualties in the armed conflict, as we have detailed in depth in a report for the Henry Jackson Society noted under this masthead.

A controlling presence of Hamas military command at Gazan hospitals reflects its control over health information and its misuse of civilians in a human-shield policy, which accounts for many civilian casualties. Their presence is also a Hamas crime against hospitals, which lose their status as sites protected for humanitarian functions when they are repurposed as military bases.

A pitched armed battle between Hamas and the IDF at Kamal Adwan Hospital that took place over the 2024/2025 new year resulted in the deaths of 19 identified terrorists and the arrests of 240 others. Director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, Ahmed Kahlot, and his successor, Hossam Abu Saffia, held ranks within Hamas of Lieutenant-Colonel and Colonel respectively.

Hamas’ control of the Kamal Adwan Hospital was confirmed by the account of a visiting Kurdish volunteer doctor, Baxtiya Baram, in May 2024. “I saw with my own eyes that hospitals were used to hide Hamas leaders,” he reported. “We saw them and even spoke with them.”

Gaza’s biggest hospital, Al-Shifa in Gaza City, was a major Hamas military base and the scene of other pitched battles. It is also where Israeli hostages were held and where spaces were dedicated for military command, prisoners, interrogations, communications, and military transport (by ambulance).

ISRAEL, MEDIA Comments turned off

The media’s dangerous lies about Israel The world was told the IDF massacred starving Palestinians. Now the BBC admits it was ‘incorrect’. Brendan O’Neill

Posted By on June 4th, 2025

https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/06/03/the-medias-dangerous-lies-about-israel/

1 June 2025. Make a note of that date. For there is a good chance it will be recorded as a day of infamy. As a day when the Jews were once again libelled as the slayers of innocents. As a day when the intellectual classes mimicked their benighted forebears of the medieval era and falsely accused the Jewish nation of spilling blood for sport. For many it was just an ordinary Sunday – but for those who will come to write the history of our times, it will stand out as a day of frenzied hearsay in which Jews were once again branded demons and bloodlusters.

Reports of a massacre in Gaza came early that day. It took place in Rafah, we were told, at one of the distribution centres overseen by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, the US-Israel group that’s providing aid to Gaza’s needy. With depthless cruelty, IDF troops opened fire on the half-starved Palestinians queuing for meals. Thirty-one souls were slaughtered in the ‘aid-centre attack’, as the BBC swiftly called it. A venomous fury spread through the internet. No one can deny it now, people cried: Israel is ‘replicating’ Nazi tactics. Just as the Nazis told Jews they were being put on trains for a better life, so the New Nazis promise Palestinians food as ‘a pretext for slaughter’.

There was one problem with these breathless accounts of a wicked massacre: it seems no such thing took place. Last night, the BBC backtracked. It said it has now studied the ‘graphic video’ of the ‘aid-centre massacre’ and has ruled that it is ‘incorrect’. We were told the ‘massacre’ took place early in the morning, yet the ‘direction of the shadows’ in the clip point to an event that took place ‘after 7pm local time’. More devastatingly, the Beeb geolocated the clip and found that it was filmed in a part of Khan Younis that is 4.5km from the nearest aid-distribution centre. A journalist in Gaza confirmed it: the events in the viral clip are ‘unrelated to any aid-distribution site’.

If what the BBC is now saying is correct, then we have just witnessed something truly horrifying. We have watched as an untruth spread with uncommon speed to every corner of the Earth. We have seen a serious calumny be taken as good coin by newsmakers and influencers. Worse, we’ve witnessed an eruption of bigotry. Reports of an ‘aid-centre massacre’ unleashed untold Jew hatred. Across social media, the cry went up: they’re demons, they’re Nazis, they claim to be the ‘Chosen People’ and yet they use food to tempt innocents into the path of murder. All were in agreement: the Jewish nation is the most evil nation.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Harvard has brought this reckoning on itself Free speech and the pursuit of truth were abandoned long before Trump. Sean Collins

Posted By on June 4th, 2025

https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/06/04/harvard-has-brought-this-reckoning-on-itself/

In its war on Harvard, the Trump administration has dropped some serious bombs on America’s most prestigious university. It is investigating Harvard for violating the 1964 Civil Rights Act by tolerating racial discrimination and anti-Semitism. It has frozen more than $3 billion in federal funding and cancelled the government’s remaining contracts with Harvard. Trump himself has threatened to revoke the university’s tax-exempt status. A Republican budget bill, meanwhile, would impose higher taxes on Harvard and other universities’ endowments. Most recently, the administration has sought to stop Harvard from enrolling foreign students for allegedly failing to comply with requests for information about ‘pro-terrorism conduct’ on campus (a court has temporarily halted that attempt).

These aggressive moves follow Harvard’s decision to sue the administration for threatening its funding, unless it complied with demands outlined in a letter sent in April. These demands include allowing the government to review hiring and admissions decisions, audit faculty, students and staff for viewpoint diversity, ban students ‘hostile to American values’, and provide regular updates to the administration, among other stipulations.

While Harvard has an immense $53 billion endowment, the Trump funding cuts, if enacted, could still be financially devastating. Barring foreign students would be particularly damaging, as they make up 27 per cent of Harvard’s total enrolment and an even greater proportion of its revenue. One Harvard professor has called it ‘an extinction-level event’.

Harvard and its president, Alan Garber, have refused to negotiate with the administration and instead appear to be relishing the fight. Opponents of Trump – the broader Harvard community, Democrats and sympathetic media – hail Garber as a hero, the face of a renewed ‘Resistance’. Bernie Sanders has congratulated Harvard ‘for refusing to relinquish its constitutional rights to Trump’s authoritarianism’. Garber received a standing ovation at Harvard’s recent commencement ceremony.

Harvard claims it is focussed on resisting government overreach into academic affairs, specifically the administration’s ‘demands to control Harvard’s governance, curriculum, and the “ideology” of its faculty and students’. But underlying its resistance is the belief that criticisms of Harvard are largely unfounded, and that the university does not require significant reforms. Trump, in Harvard’s view, is motivated by animus toward higher education, and the issue of anti-Semitism is merely a pretext for destroying institutions he sees as hostile. Harvard professor Steven Pinker, who has previously criticised his university on free-speech issues, recently wrote that Trump and other critics suffer from ‘Harvard Derangement Syndrome’. Trump’s ‘obvious motivation is to cripple civil-society institutions that serve as loci of influence outside the executive branch’, he says.